Nurses and other staff in a hospital ward or hospital wing must work under varying conditions, which include high pressure, stress and long hours. These caregivers must remain alert to respond to patient needs, in emergency and nonemergency situations. Due to economic practicalities and the ever-increasing costs of medical care, it is necessary to make the most efficient use of nurses and staff on call in a hospital wing, particularly at night when nurse and staff levels are maintained at a minimum.
On the other hand, a desire to optimize the efficiency of nurse and staff personnel is of secondary importance relative to the primary objective, that of providing a high level of medical care. If nurse and staff levels are reduced for the sake of efficiency without any corresponding simplification of duties and responsibilities, the level of patient care will decrease.
It is one primary objective of this invention to maximize the efficiency of nurses and staff on call in a hospital wing, but to do so in a manner which does not increase the work load or stress levels of these professional caregivers.
One approach to maximizing the efficiency of nurses and other hospital staff involves the use of a location and identification system to continuously monitor the locations of these persons. For instance, White U.S. Pat. No. 4,275,385 discloses a personnel locating system where individuals to be located wear infrared transmitters, and each transmitter transmits a pulse-coded signal which corresponds to the identity of the wearer. This information is relayed and displayed at a central control unit. This information may also be displayed at remote terminals, used to lock restricted-access equipment or locations, or conveyed via a telephone interface to a telephone switching network to call the nearest telephone or to page the transmitter wearers.
Thus, to contact the transmitter-wearers, White requires that the location system interconnect with the telephone system and/or a paging system. This required interaction with another communication system increases the cost and complexity of interacting with the located personnel, due to the need for interfacing components. It also requires that personnel to be located either wear a receiving device, such as a pager, or that they be near a telephone.
A number of other U.S. Patents also disclose personnel locating or monitoring systems which purport to improve upon the system disclosed in the White patent. However, these improvements relate to the mechanics of signal detection, or the organization, maintenance and retrieval of stored information for making reports. These patents do not disclose use of a location system in a manner which helps nurses and staff do their jobs more efficiently and more effectively.
It is another objective of this invention to improve the overall effectiveness of a hospital personnel locating system so that the system directly benefits nurses and staff by increasing efficiency and effectiveness.
Almost every hospital wing or ward has a patient/nurse call system which includes an audio network to allow a patient in a hospital room to contact and speak with a nurse or staff member at a nurse station. Typically, the patient may activate a "call" signal by depressing a button on a small housing connected via hardwire to a unit mounted to the headwall of the patient room. This small housing is generally referred to as a pillow speaker, or pillow unit. The headwall unit usually has another wall-mounted call button for easy operation by a nurse. Other input mechanisms may include emergency call buttons, code blue buttons, or bathroom call buttons.
Additionally, the audio network of these call systems may be used for audio monitoring of a hospital room from the nurse station during an extreme emergency, such as a code "blue" status.
Hospitals also include emergency signaling devices for notifying hospital personnel of other types of emergency conditions, such as smoke detectors or a fire alarm. Typically, these devices generate audio signals to convey audible alarms over a hospital intercom system, which may or may to be interconnected with the patient room audio network.
Some hospitals use bed monitoring devices with bed sensors which indicate bed conditions,such as "brakes on", mattress firmness (for inflatable mattresses), or incontinence.
The duplicity of these call and information systems in a hospital complicates the organization, maintenance and effective dissemination of all of the useful information that is generated. If these systems cannot be operated in a simple, user-friendly manner, they can add to the stress level of nurses and staff. As a result, their jobs are made more difficult, rather than easier.
Additionally, use of multiple call and information systems in a hospital adds to the costs of health care, due to costs associated with purchase, installation and maintenance of the various components of these multiple systems, along with training personnel how to use the system.
It is another objective of this invention to expand the operational capability of a patient/nurse call system.
It is still another objective of the invention to simplify interaction with and information retrieval from a hospital communication system, thereby to reduce stress levels of nurses and staff.
It is still another objective of this invention to eliminate duplicity in communication systems used within a hospital, thereby to reduce the costs of purchase, installation and maintenance of the components of multiple systems, along with reducing the costs associated with training hospital staff in the use of multiple systems.
It is still another objective of this invention to assist nurses and staff in achieving optimum efficiency in a hospital wing.
The above-stated objectives are achieved with an improved patient/nurse call system which generates and prioritizes all types of hospital calls and facilities answering of these calls from any one of a plurality of nurse stations or patient room stations in a hospital wing. The system has the capability of visually displaying all calls at any station, including stations located in the patient rooms, thereby to facilitate the dissemination of call information and to expedite responding to the calls.
Each patient room station interconnects to a plurality of input devices for generating the different calls used in a typical hospital, such as SMOKE ALARM, CODE BLUE, STAFF EMERGENCY, etc. These calls include patient-generated, nurse-generated or automatically generated calls. Calls may also be generated at one or more of the nurse stations.
The calls are forwarded to a master station, which prioritizes the calls according to status and time received. Outside of each patient room, in the hall, a hall unit mounted above the doorway displays an indication that a call has originated from the room. The hall units connect directly to the patient room stations.
Each patient room station preferably has a display and selection controls to allow retrieval and display of all calls. Thus, after responding to a call in a first patient room, a nurse at that patient station can retrieve and display the remaining calls and then respond to the highest priority unanswered call.
The system also provides for audio interconnection between any two stations. This audio interconnection capability, along with the display of unanswered calls, facilities oral communication among nurse, hospital staff and patients, thereby promoting efficiency in responding to calls.
Preferably, the nurses on duty in the hospital wing wear nurse locator badges, and these badges transmit pulsed-coded infrared signals to receivers operatively connected to the patient stations. In response, the patient stations generate corresponding identification signals unique to the wearer of the badge. The system then couples each identification signal with a location signal to form a signal pair, with the identification signal corresponding to the patient station of receipt. The signal pairs are automatically downloaded and stored at the master station.
This nurse identification and location information may be displayed at the master station, or at any of the other stations. This allows a person at any station to visually display the identifications and locations of the nurses on duty in the wing, in addition to unanswered calls. This combination of display features optimizes the communication capabilities among nurses, hospital staff and patients in a hospital wing. Thus, rather than serving primarily as a nurse monitoring system, as in some prior nurse locating systems, this system facilitates communication among nurses and staff and optimizes information flow to nurses and staff in a simple, user-friendly manner, thereby increasing efficiency and effectiveness.
In conjunction with the nurse locator badges, the system also provides for automatic cancelling of a patient call, and automatic cancelling of the visual display of the call by the respective hall unit, after a nurse wearing a badge is sensed by the respective patient station. Receipt of a nurse signal does not cancel higher priority calls, such as CODE BLUE, BATHROOM call. Preferably, a visual indicator at each patient station indicates that a call has been received. The respective hall unit also visually displays nurse presence within the respective patient room.
In another mode, referred to as "nurse follower", a patient call generated from a patient room is automatically signalled audibly to the nurse assigned to that room, wherever the nurse is located. In short, the patient-placed call "follows" the nurse. This allows the nurse to immediately initiate an audio conversation with the patient to assess the importance of the call, without requiring the nurse to leave the room he or she is already in.
According to a preferred embodiment of the invention, an improved patient/nurse call system for a hospital wing includes a master station, a plurality of patient stations, (although referred to as "patient" stations, these stations may also be located in nurse or staff areas) and nurse-worn transmitter badges. A private branch exchange (PBX) system interconnects the master station and the other stations, and each room has an intra-room network. The intra-room network includes a hall unit mounted in the hall way and at least one patient station, at least one receiver, and inputs for generating digital signals related to calls or bed status information.
The master station provides communication capabilities for the other stations. It receives, stores and sends call information, instructions and status messages from the stations, and it controls and monitors all aspects of the system. The master station includes a console with a display, a control wheel and a handset. The master station further includes a personal computer with memory capacity for storing hospital calls and nurse location and identification information generated by the system.
Each patient station in a hospital room is associated with a single patient bed, although the system could also be configured so that each station would accommodate multiple beds. Each patient station includes a wall-mounted housing with a control wheel, a display, call generation/cancellation buttons, indicating lights and an audio speaker. Nurses at a patient station can readily retrieve stored, unanswered calls or nurse location information from the master station by operation of the user-friendly control wheel and display.
The private branch exchange operates as a voice/data switching system for establishing audio links and data distribution between the master station and the other stations. The master station interconnects with the PBX via an RS-232 serial data line, and the PBX interconnects with each patient station via a twisted pair telephone line. The network for the system is basically a telephone network which provides synchronous, full duplex, voice and data communications between any two patient stations or between any patient station and the master station. It also allows two way audio links or connections between multiple pairs of stations. The PBX is a transparent device from the standpoint of signal content and interaction. It simply provides an audio and data communications link between any two stations upon request.
Each interaction between a patient station and the PBX is actually routed through an input/output board dedicated to the patient room in which the station is located. This I/O board routes all signals to or from the patient room, including generation of calls by input devices, display of calls at the hall unit associated with each room, and generation of a nurse identification signal in response to receipt of a pulse-coded signal from a nurse-worn badge. The I/O board controls the network associated with that patient room, i.e. the intra-room network.
When a PATIENT call is generated at a station, the I/O board signals the hall unit to illuminate a display light designated for PATIENT calls. The call is also routed to the master station via the PBX, where it is categorized according to priority and then stored. Preferably, the master station continuously displays all received and stored calls, and these calls are routed for display at any of the patient stations upon request at the patient station.
Similarly, the nurse location and identify information can also be retrieved for display at each patient station via operation of the control wheel and the display.
This invention expands the operational capability of a patient/nurse call system to facilitate locating, prioritizing and responding to all types of hospital calls in a systematic way. Because of its simplicity in operation, this improved patient/nurse call system reduces the required amount of training time normally associated with learning a new communication system, in addition to reducing the stress level of nurses and staff on duty in a hospital wing.
This improved patient/nurse call system provides generation, storage, retrieval and display of hospital calls, generation, storage, retrieval and display of nurse identity and location information, automatic display and cancelling of calls, an audio interconnection between any two stations, and multiple two way audio interconnections between station pairs. As a result, this invention reduces the overall hospital costs associated with installing and maintaining multiple systems with duplicative and/or overlapping capabilities, thereby resulting in a cost savings to the hospital.
These and other features of the invention will be more readily understood in view of the following detailed description and the drawings.